Tag / robert duvall

by Jaime Rebanal

Widows is the Most Captivating Heist Film in Years and Stretches Beyond Genre Conventions: TIFF Review

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Steve McQueen’s fourth feature film marks the British filmmaker’s first foray into genre filmmaking fresh off his Best Picture win for 12 Years a Slave, and arguably a case for what may also be his best film yet. Based on the ITV miniseries of the same name created by Lynda La Plante, what McQueen and Gone Girl writer Gillian Flynn have created is not just any other thriller but a very special one indeed – one where it feels every position carries a sense of power over one another. It’s a thriller that carries all the best elements of the genre, but also something so much more thoughtful in its presentation it feels outright irresistible. Yet this is only a fraction of where Widows’s greatness comes by, if more needed to be said about why Steve McQueen is one of this generation’s best working filmmakers. But knowing that a filmmaker like Steve McQueen and a writer like Gillian Flynn can join forces in creating what also happens to be one of the most emotionally visceral thriller films to be released in recent memory.

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by Jaime Rebanal

The Godfather – Review

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I think trying to deconstruct what it is that I love about The Godfather so much is already its greatest challenge when so much of the praise that it receives is well-deserved. The Godfather is truly one of the greatest films ever made, but trying to type up my own praises was already hard enough when I already have an ingrained fear inside of my head that what I had to say would indeed just be the same as what’s already been said prior. But having the opportunity to see The Godfather in theaters only opened my eyes to something greater as a whole, because it had been less than half a year since the last time I revisited such a dense piece of work, and rather quickly I only found my own appreciation growing – finding so many smaller details catching my attention far more, to that point I can only join in and regurgitate what I know has already been said: The Godfather is truly one of the greatest films ever to have been made.

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by Jaime Rebanal

Network – Review

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Sidney Lumet’s Network is mad as hell and it won’t take it anymore. The mainstream media is set to do anything in order to boost their ratings, and that’s where Network still runs perfectly true even today. We already recognized the anger within Network‘s satire back when it came out and to this day, it remains one of the most vicious satires ever made, because today, the content which it shows is indeed still as shocking as it was back in 1976. The best way one can imagine a film like Network is to think of it as Sidney Lumet’s equivalent to Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, and instead of the Cold War, place it within the context of television news networks, suddenly you’ll get the brooding cynicism that was presented here. Continue reading →